Page 82 of Captured by a Laird
“Ye must let me try, because I refuse to pretend this marriage never happened,” she said.
“Our chieftain will be gravely displeased to learn you’ve refused to do your duty as a Douglas.”
“My brother knows of this?”
“At whose behest do you think I came here?” When she did not respond, he rolled his eyes heavenward. “I negotiated this agreement with the Blackadders at your brother’s request.”
Archie had done this to her? “Does George know?”
“Of course he does,” he said with an impatient sigh.
She was devastated to learn that her brothers had once again put their ambitions above her well-being. They expected her to submit to being used as a pawn, and they could not even be bothered to tell her to her face.
“I’ll take you and your daughters home to Tantallon now,” he said, referring to the massive Douglas fortress on the edge of the sea. “You can speak with your brothers there.”
“My home is at Blackadder Castle with my husband,” she said. “’Tis growing late. I must collect my daughters and return. When ye see my sisters, please give them my warm regards.”
Her brothers could go to hell.
“Be forewarned,” her uncle said, his face turning a blotchy red, “this is not the end of it.”
Alison had all she could stomach of the arrogance of the men in her family, starting with her uncle.
“I’m saving ye from making a grave mistake,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “I know the Blackadders better than you do, and they cannot be trusted.”
“’Tis not your place—”
“David Hume is ten times the man that any of the Blackadder are,” she said. “Tell my brothers that they’d be wise to make him their ally—and damned foolish to make him their enemy.”
With that, she whirled around and headed for the door.
***
“Surely the men who accompanied my wife left word as to where they were going,” David said, gripping Robbie’s shoulders.
“She refused an escort,” Robbie said. “She told them she was only letting the girls circle the castle with their ponies.”
David wanted to strangle the guards for not going with them. “When was this?”
“At daybreak, shortly before the guards changed,” Robbie said. “I woke up the men who were at the gate at the time, and that’s all they could tell me.”
“That was at least an hour ago,” David said.
“Do ye think they were taken, or…” Robbie’s voice faded, leaving unsaid the alternative—that she had left him of her own accord.
“I don’t know,” David said, though the timing just before the guard changed certainly suggested she had planned it. “Whether she and the lassies left on their own or were taken, they are in danger. We must find them, and quickly.”
“But we don’t know where to look,” Robbie said.
“They can’t have gotten far.” David tried to make himself think. Where would Alison go?
Or to whom?
CHAPTER 33
Alison was frantically helping her daughters into their cloaks when the prior returned.
“You’re not letting her leave, are you?” the prior asked, glaring at Alison’s uncle.
